Chinguetti

Chinguetti (Arabic: شنقيط) is a ksour or ancient trading centre in northern Mauritania, lying on the Adrar Plateau east of Atar.

Founded in the 13th century, as the center of several trans-Saharan trade routes, this small threatened city continues to attract visitors who admire its spare architecture, exotic scenery and its ancient libraries.

The indigenous Saharan architecture of older sectors of the city feature stone and mud-brick houses with patios crowding along narrow streets around a neighborhood mosque with a square minaret. Notable buildings in the town include The Friday Mosque of Chinguetti, a former French Foreign Legion fortress and a tall watertower. The old quarter of the Chinguetti is home to five important manuscript libraries of scientific and Qur'anic texts, with many dating from the later Middle Ages.

History and Other Features

The Chinguetti region has been occupied for thousands of years and once was a broad savannah. Cave paintings in the nearby Amoghar Pass feature pictures of giraffes, cows and people in a green landscape quite different from the starkly beautiful sand dunes of the desert landscape found in the region today.

The city was originally founded in 777, and by the 11th century had become a trading center for a confederation of Berber tribes known as the Sanhadja Confederation. Soon after settling Chinguetti, the Sanhadja first interacted with and eventually melded with the Almavorids, the founders of the Moorish Empire which stretched from present-day Senegal to Spain. The city's stark unadorned architecture reflects the strict, "Malikite" Islamic beliefs of the Almavorids.

After two centuries of decline, the city was effectively re-founded in the 13th century as a fortified cross-Saharan caravan trading center connecting the Mediterranean with Sub-Saharan Africa. Although the walls of the original fortification disappeared centuries ago, many of the buildings in the city still date from this period.

Chinguetti is sometimes said to be the seventh holiest city of Islam. There is no specific evidence for this claim, but whatever its ranking, the city remains one of the world's most important historical sites both in terms of the history of Islam and the history of West Africa. For centuries the city was a principal gathering place for pilgrims of the Maghreb to gather on the way to Mecca and it became known as a holy city in its own right, especially for pilgrims unable to make the long journey to the Arab Peninsula. It also became a center of Islamic religious and scientific scholarship in West Africa. In addition to religious training, the schools of Chinguetti taught students rhetoric, law, astronomy, mathematics, and medicine. For many centuries all of Mauritania was popularly known in the Arab world as "Bilad Shinqit, “the land of Chinguetti.”

Although largely abandoned to the desert, the city features a series of medieval manuscript libraries without peer in West Africa, and the area around the Rue des Savants was once famous as a gathering place for scholars to debate the finer points of Islamic law. Today its deserted streets continue to reflect the urban and religious architecture of the Moorish empire as it existed in the Middle Ages.

Today, along with the cities of Ouadane, Tichitt and Oualata, Chinguetti has been designated as a World heritage site. The Friday Mosque of Chinguetti, is widely considered by Mauritanians to be the national symbol of the country. Mauritania's recently discovered offshore oilfield was named Chinguetti in its honor.

While difficult to get to, Chinguetti's stark beauty and exotic, medieval Islamic architecture make the region an interesting, if challenging, tourist destination for both the adventurous traveler and the Islamic scholar.

Famous residents

Ahmad ibn Al-Amin Al-Shinqiti (1863–1913) Mauritania's most famous modern writer

References

• UNESCO on Chinguetti
• Mauritania Today - Chinguetti
• A "Saudi Aramco World" article on Chinguetti's manuscripts
• CNN Traveler Article on Chinguetti and its libraries
• U.S. Department of State Reports - Mauritania
• Palatin's Travels- Chinguetti
• Desert libraries

External links

• 600 pictures of Adrar and Chinguetti

Gallery

• 
  The Great "Friday Mosque" of Chinguetti
• 
  Inside a Qur'anic Library